Other than Peter Singer and maybe Givewell, are any of these accomplishments really that outstanding? When there are numbers given, the numbers are unimpressive (144k/70k users is tiny—and why do I care how many questions someone’s asked on a forum website?), and when there aren’t, the accomplishments are pretty questionable.
When you say:
They’ve contributed much more than have people of their ability level who take more conventional paths. In some cases, the factor by which the value of their activities has increased is perhaps ~2x, in others it may be more like ~100x.
...without definiting “contributed” or “value” according to any objective metric, the first thing I assume is that you’re trying to handwave.
Before continuing this project, I would try to answer the following questions:
What is an objective, quantifiable metric that represents your value proposition?
What existing pain point are you hoping to address?
What do you bring to the table that allows you to address this pain point better than the existing solutions?
Why are you alone the people that can deliver the above?
Then, figure out what you’re doing, validate that your idea actualy works, and then come back.
Other than Peter Singer and maybe Givewell, are any of these accomplishments really that outstanding?
Some people would disagree with your singling out Singer and GiveWell as standing out above the others.
As I said, most of the people involved are quite young, and can be expected to contribute more value over time.
If 144k people are willing to pay $10 on average for lifetime membership that generates $1.4 million.
Art of Problem Solving probably has revenue at least $2 million / year, is probably far from market saturation, and has positive externalities on account of being educational.
Many of the things listed are side projects, not full-time employment.
I’m not claiming that the value in a given case is more than 2x.
What is an objective, quantifiable metric that represents your value proposition?
One can’t hope to predict things with such precision ahead of time, and even afterward it’s often not possible to quantify things. One has to rely on more informal measures.
What existing pain point are you hoping to address?
I think I address this in my original post starting with “But there are others who have most of the relevant traits for whom there are only one or two limiting factors.”
What do you bring to the table that allows you to address this pain point better than the existing solutions?
The answer to this could be very long, depending on how broadly one defines “existing solutions.” Could you give a concrete example or two of existing entities that you think provide solutions?
Why are you alone the people that can deliver the above?
We’re not the only people who can deliver the above, and don’t need to be for it to be a worthwhile endeavor – it suffices for us to be the only people who are actually working on it.
There are many entities that have produced relevant materials (e.g. offering information on specific careers), but we don’t know of others who are taking a holistic approach, for example presenting career information about earnings, social value contributed, work-life balance, background preparation required and exit options in juxtaposition across different careers.
It really seems like when you say “outstanding people” you’re really saying:
“People who have accomplished a lot in the world of rationality or effective altruism.”
I could name off the top of my head half a dozen younger people who have blogs that get more facebook shares than slate star codex, have made more money than $1.4 million dollars, or have a bigger audience than Peter Singer. Not to mention other outstanding accomplishments (such as olympic athletes), which you didn’t seem to touch on at all.
By choosing these people as your examples, you’re indicating an implicit social bias towards your recommendations and values, which is not at all clear from the copy on your website.
My choice of examples is partially driven by who happens to be most salient to me.
My list wasn’t intended to be a list of people with the most impressive accomplishments: I intentionally omitted extreme outliers because there’s a strong prior against being able to enable someone to become one.
When I referred to impressive/outstanding accomplishments, I did have social value in mind specifically.
I’m indifferent as to whether the social value is added through involvement with rationality or effective altruism, or through other channels.
My main point being, if you’re going to push people towards specific careers and away from others for your own ideological reasons, that should really be VERY clear in the copy on your website. Same as if a fundamentalist Christian group was offering free consulting on family planning.
To date, our focus has been on producing a holistic package of information to help our advisees attain life satisfaction. The vast majority of the pages that we’ve produced are not about topics directly related to effective altruism.
A number of our advisees have explicitly expressed interest in doing something socially valuable. We’re working to advise them accordingly. Our estimate of our potential impact as described in the original post is based on people in this reference class.
We’re committed to providing unbiased information, and present the pros and cons of all career options under consideration irrespective of their social value.
Nothing wrong with that. MattG is not accusing you, but you are defending (note: defending is a sign of weakness). I recommend that you agree on MattGs point. It is not wrong. It is an improvement suggestion and would make you appear more humble if followed.
Added: I think this is the reason he is upvoted and you are not.
You’re right, but adding social value is very different from having an outstanding accomplishment.
My point is, if the point of their organization is to push people towards specific careers due to a specific ideology (which it’s clear based on this list is the case), that should be VERY clear in their marketing copy.
It’s a very crowded market. I don’t think that the value that people perceive rsises significantly if a new athlete that a tiny bit better than the existing ones comes along.
Well, for Olympic athletes proper, who are often amateurs or semi-professionals, this may be true, but for professional athletes who compete in major sports such as association football or basketball, this doesn’t seem to be the case: top-level athletes are able to command salaries in the order of $1M - $10M per year. Assuming the market isn’t grossly inefficient, this implies that there are very few people in the world who can perform these jobs delivering the same level of performance, despite the high demand. Thus, any single top-level athlete in these sports probably produces a significant amount of economic value.
Top-level basketball players get payed based on their skill in comparision to other basketball players.
An action that increaes the average skill level of all basketball players a bit won’t increase the amount of money that basketball fans are willing to pay for watching basketball games.
One can’t hope to predict things with such precision ahead of time, and even afterward it’s often not possible to quantify things. One has to rely on more informal measures.
This means you will lie to yourselves to get whatever answer you want. You should not expect anyone to help you, nor should you expect to succeed.
Other than Peter Singer and maybe Givewell, are any of these accomplishments really that outstanding? When there are numbers given, the numbers are unimpressive (144k/70k users is tiny—and why do I care how many questions someone’s asked on a forum website?), and when there aren’t, the accomplishments are pretty questionable.
When you say:
...without definiting “contributed” or “value” according to any objective metric, the first thing I assume is that you’re trying to handwave.
Before continuing this project, I would try to answer the following questions:
What is an objective, quantifiable metric that represents your value proposition?
What existing pain point are you hoping to address?
What do you bring to the table that allows you to address this pain point better than the existing solutions?
Why are you alone the people that can deliver the above?
Then, figure out what you’re doing, validate that your idea actualy works, and then come back.
Thanks for the comment.
Some people would disagree with your singling out Singer and GiveWell as standing out above the others.
As I said, most of the people involved are quite young, and can be expected to contribute more value over time.
If 144k people are willing to pay $10 on average for lifetime membership that generates $1.4 million.
Art of Problem Solving probably has revenue at least $2 million / year, is probably far from market saturation, and has positive externalities on account of being educational.
Many of the things listed are side projects, not full-time employment.
I’m not claiming that the value in a given case is more than 2x.
One can’t hope to predict things with such precision ahead of time, and even afterward it’s often not possible to quantify things. One has to rely on more informal measures.
I think I address this in my original post starting with “But there are others who have most of the relevant traits for whom there are only one or two limiting factors.”
The answer to this could be very long, depending on how broadly one defines “existing solutions.” Could you give a concrete example or two of existing entities that you think provide solutions?
We’re not the only people who can deliver the above, and don’t need to be for it to be a worthwhile endeavor – it suffices for us to be the only people who are actually working on it.
There are many entities that have produced relevant materials (e.g. offering information on specific careers), but we don’t know of others who are taking a holistic approach, for example presenting career information about earnings, social value contributed, work-life balance, background preparation required and exit options in juxtaposition across different careers.
It really seems like when you say “outstanding people” you’re really saying:
“People who have accomplished a lot in the world of rationality or effective altruism.”
I could name off the top of my head half a dozen younger people who have blogs that get more facebook shares than slate star codex, have made more money than $1.4 million dollars, or have a bigger audience than Peter Singer. Not to mention other outstanding accomplishments (such as olympic athletes), which you didn’t seem to touch on at all.
By choosing these people as your examples, you’re indicating an implicit social bias towards your recommendations and values, which is not at all clear from the copy on your website.
My choice of examples is partially driven by who happens to be most salient to me.
My list wasn’t intended to be a list of people with the most impressive accomplishments: I intentionally omitted extreme outliers because there’s a strong prior against being able to enable someone to become one.
When I referred to impressive/outstanding accomplishments, I did have social value in mind specifically.
I’m indifferent as to whether the social value is added through involvement with rationality or effective altruism, or through other channels.
My main point being, if you’re going to push people towards specific careers and away from others for your own ideological reasons, that should really be VERY clear in the copy on your website. Same as if a fundamentalist Christian group was offering free consulting on family planning.
To date, our focus has been on producing a holistic package of information to help our advisees attain life satisfaction. The vast majority of the pages that we’ve produced are not about topics directly related to effective altruism.
A number of our advisees have explicitly expressed interest in doing something socially valuable. We’re working to advise them accordingly. Our estimate of our potential impact as described in the original post is based on people in this reference class.
We’re committed to providing unbiased information, and present the pros and cons of all career options under consideration irrespective of their social value.
Nothing wrong with that. MattG is not accusing you, but you are defending (note: defending is a sign of weakness). I recommend that you agree on MattGs point. It is not wrong. It is an improvement suggestion and would make you appear more humble if followed.
Added: I think this is the reason he is upvoted and you are not.
Being an olympic athletes doesn’t prdocue added social value. It’s very much a zero sum game.
You’re right, but adding social value is very different from having an outstanding accomplishment.
My point is, if the point of their organization is to push people towards specific careers due to a specific ideology (which it’s clear based on this list is the case), that should be VERY clear in their marketing copy.
People are willing to pay lots of money to watch Olympic athletes, so by economists’ definition of value they do provide lots of it.
It’s a very crowded market. I don’t think that the value that people perceive rsises significantly if a new athlete that a tiny bit better than the existing ones comes along.
Well, for Olympic athletes proper, who are often amateurs or semi-professionals, this may be true, but for professional athletes who compete in major sports such as association football or basketball, this doesn’t seem to be the case: top-level athletes are able to command salaries in the order of $1M - $10M per year. Assuming the market isn’t grossly inefficient, this implies that there are very few people in the world who can perform these jobs delivering the same level of performance, despite the high demand. Thus, any single top-level athlete in these sports probably produces a significant amount of economic value.
Top-level basketball players get payed based on their skill in comparision to other basketball players.
An action that increaes the average skill level of all basketball players a bit won’t increase the amount of money that basketball fans are willing to pay for watching basketball games.
This means you will lie to yourselves to get whatever answer you want. You should not expect anyone to help you, nor should you expect to succeed.